NEW DELHI: A management degree continues to hold the promise of a green card and a million dollar job, albeit for smaller towns. India's B-school revolution is being spurred by aspirants in mini-metros and Tier II cities even as demand in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore has steadied. Over 30,200 Indian students took the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) in 2012, an increase of 41% since 2007.

GMAT is offered in 17 cities through 20 test centres. Four of these centres, including Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Coimbatore and Indore, were added in the last two years. Between 2011 and 2012, Visakhapatnam showed a growth of 479%, Nagpur 222% and Indore 80%.

Other centres where the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducts the test include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Pune. GMAC plans to open a second centre in Delhi and two more in Mumbai in 2013.

"These cities now have a strata who can afford to send their children overseas and there is a growing awareness of the options,'' Ashish Bhardwaj, GMAC vice-president (Asia-Pacific), said.

He added that the council decided to add a test centre if they found that over 300 students were forced to travel more than 4 hours to get to a centre. "We found that several students were travelling either to Mumbai or Delhi from Nagpur to give the exam. This prompted us to start a test centre there,'' Bhardwaj said.

The GMAT exam is accepted by around 5,400 graduate business and management programmes worldwide. In 2011, 25,394 students took the exam which went up to 30,213 in 2012. India ranked third after the US and China in the number of students opting for the exam. With 58,196 exams taken in 2012, Chinese test takers are the second-largest citizenship group after the US and represent 20% of global testing.

Indian citizens, the third-largest citizenship group, took 30,213 GMAT exams in 2012, and test takers are sending a higher percentage of scores to programmes in India, the UK, Singapore, France and Canada. However, according to latest trends, the fastest growing destinations for Indian students to send their scores are Spain, Hong Kong, UAE and Germany.

Not surprisingly, Europe has seen a dip in popularity. European citizens sat for 24,847 GMAT exams in 2012, up 26% from 2008, and they sent more than 60% of their scores to programmes in Europe, the highest level ever. Citizens of Germany, France, Russia, Italy and the UK together sat for more than half the region's exams in 2012.

* Growth in new centres between 2011 and 2012

Visakhapatnam479%

Nagpur222%

Indore 80%

* 30,213 Indian students took GMAT in 2012

* Fastest growing destinations for Indian students to send their scores